Instructional Media Screencast

Description: This is an instructional screencast that is used to teach my students how to create a graph using the Microsoft Excel program. This screencast was created using Jing. The idea of a screencast is to take a video of your screen or a portion of your screen while you narrate what you are doing. Screencasts are helpful tutorials that assist students when using a program on their computer that they may not be particularly familiar with. Screencast are a good way of showing a process when the teacher may not be able to be up in front of the class.

Link to Instructional Media Screencast:
http://screencast.com/t/NzU2MTJhNGEt


Process for Completing Instructional Media Screencast: I decided to create my screencast on how to create a graph using excel. The students had to complete a multiple intelligence survey as an introduction activity for their online course with me. I decided to create a screencast to assist the students with creating a graph using excel because this is something that will have to do multiple times throughout my unit. They will be collecting, graphing, and analyzing data on the temperatures for cities all over the world. As far as creating my screencast I used the program Jing. Jing allows you to capture a video of your screen or a portion of your screen. I selected my area and then walked through the steps of creating a graph using excel. Jing only allows you to take video of your screen for five minutes. Once my video was complete in order to share my video I had to upload my video onto screencast.com which then provided me with a link to allow for sharing of my video. That link is found above.

Reflection: I really found the activity of creating a screencast rather easy. At first I was a little overwhelmed because I was thinking it was going to be much more challenging than it actually was. The only problem that I had with creating my screencast was the fact that Jing.com only allows you to take five minutes of video. I was not aware of this so I had to keep cutting out things that were less important from my video to make it fit within the time constraints. Now if I wanted I could pay the money to upgrade to JingPro which would allow me to record longer videos. I can see how using screencasts can be very helpful for students when working with a new concept on the computer. By completing this assignment and seeing how easy it was to do, I am actually thinking about including more screencasts into my virtual classroom unit. It is a great way to show (not just tell) your students exactly what is expected without standing in front of them.